Oakland Mayor Quan scores low in poll

OAKLAND

Joe Garofoli

Published 4:33 pm, Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan celebrated the city's achievements in her State of the City speech Feb. 27, but most residents don't approve of the job she's doing.
Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan celebrated the city's achievements in her...

Oakland Mayor, Jean Quan, listens to Oakland Police Chief, Howard Jordan, talk about a new strategy to deal with crime in the city while at City Hall on December 27, 2012 in Oakland, Calif. Oakland Mayor, Jean Quan along with Jordan, announced the hiring of a high-profile law enforcement consultant to help control the high crime rate in the city.
Photo: Sean Havey, The Chronicle

Oakland residents are channeling their civic frustrations at Mayor Jean Quan, with a new poll showing 60 percent of residents disapproving of her job performance and 65 percent saying the city is on the wrong track.

The SurveyUSA poll of 500 Oakland residents released this week found that crime is the driving factor in the disapproval rating. The poll found that 71 percent of Oaklanders surveyed listed crime as their top concern.

The same poll found that in San Francisco, where Mayor Ed Lee enjoys a 61 percent approval rating, only 13 percent of the residents listed crime as their top worry. The cost of owning a home was the most pressing concern for San Franciscans.

The margin of error on the poll, which was taken between Feb. 28 and Sunday for KPIX-TV, was plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

In her State of the City address last month, Quan said it would take an "amazing (economic) boom" for the city to have 800 police officers within five years. It now has 611.

Disapproval was strong across all demographic groups toward Quan, who is the first female and Asian American mayor of Oakland. It was highest among Asian American respondents, 67 percent of whom disapproved of her performance.

"Jean Quan has an enormous problem in terms of getting the government of Oakland to respond to what the people want," said Michael Semler, a professor of political science at Cal State Sacramento. "Voters are less likely to be forgiving toward local politicians. With the mayor, there's the feeling that the buck stops there."

But Semler said Quan still could win re-election next year because Oakland uses a ranked-choice voting system, whereby votes for the second- and third-place are factored in to the final total, too - the same system that propelled Quan to victory in 2010 from her initial second-place finish.

"She is still the incumbent, and many voters gravitate toward a known quantity," Semler said.